


i'll be seeing you

by allyourdarlings



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 6x11, 6x11 AU, Captain Swan - Freeform, F/M, Fix-It, OUAT Season 6, Old Hook, Past Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Milah, Princess Emma, Wish Realm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-02 22:58:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10229687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyourdarlings/pseuds/allyourdarlings
Summary: When Emma meets an alternative version of Killian Jones, she realizes she has to make her own fate.  For him as much as for her. 6x11 AU, with a different Old Hook.





	

 

Emma had to admit - though this realm had been created by a wish, every unreal person had been reliably consistent with their counterpart back home.  Pinocchio may have had good intentions but he was pretty damn good at getting lost.  They wasted half the day trying to find the Enchanted Grove before he sheepishly explained he didn’t quite remember where it was.

 

“I didn’t want to disappoint you,” he explained on their way back to her parents’ castle.

 

 

“I understand,” she gritted out - she decidedly _did not_ – “but really, next time let’s just get the map first.”

 

“I have to warn you, that old mapmaker does not like to be disturbed.” 

 

As though _that_ was the problem.

 

“Well too bad,” Emma muttered as they snuck into the castle. 

 

It was odd having two sets of memories, to be familiar with the unfamiliar, to know all the hidden passageways with uncertain certainty.  It was even odder to know that she knew the castle this well _not_ because she had been innately curious as a child but because she had been lonely.  It didn’t seem right that she should have been lonely in both realms when in one, she had in fact been abandoned and in the other, she had been loved and doted upon but without any true peers.

 

Emma shook her head.  There was no reason to dwell on a parallel realm of loneliness.  She wasn’t lonely anymore.  She had her parents, her brother, her son _and_ her pirate now.  She needed to get back to them.

 

“You know, I don’t think I’ve even been in the map room,” she said as she pushed against the plain wooden door.  She knew the whole layout of the castle, had memorized a blueprint as a child, but she couldn’t recall what the interior of the room looked like or if she even seen the formidable mapmaker.

 

As such, she was unprepared for the sight that greeted her - shelves upon shelves of neatly rolled up maps, lining each wall, stretching up and up to cathedral high ceilings. 

 

“Shit.”

 

“I guess we better get start,” Pinocchio said almost cheerily, as though it wouldn’t take several years to unroll and consult each map.

 

“No, no,” Emma said, holding her hand out to prevent her friend from taking on another wasteful endeavor.  Emma shook her head - when had she held the line of reason instead of plunging head first?  But she could almost hear Killian in her head.  They needed a plan.  And then Henry following up with an operation name.  Operation Get Home?  Operation Enchanted Wood?  She really needed her son for that.  But maybe she could think more methodically like Killian.  He had a system for everything.  Maybe the mapmaker did too.

 

That was it!  She sent a silent ‘thank you’ to Killian for having a damn color coding system even for breakfast foods. Orange for citrus fruits to prevent scurvy.  Brown for grains.  She scanned the shelves, trying to figure out where to start.  She pulled a couple of maps in order and tried to match them up.  Everything looked neat and orderly but she couldn’t make the puzzle pieces fit.  Maybe only the mapmaker knew... “Where’s this mapmaker friend of yours?” She asked looking around, wondering if perhaps he had been hiding in the dust of this cavernous room the whole time.

 

“Oh, he’s not a friend of mine.  I’m not sure he has any friends,” Pinocchio defended.

 

“Right, well that’s not what matters.  Where else would he be if he’s not here?  We have to find him.”

 

* * *

 

The tavern.  Of course, Emma thought, as she followed a wary Pinocchio, a man brought up by a father’s careful guidance, less susceptible to temptation, less tempted by adventure. If you could call the quaint and well-kept tavern by the water adventurous.  By the eager looks Pinocchio was giving her, she supposed he might.

 

She couldn’t help but wonder where Killian was in this realm as they made their way into the rather quiet and genteel space.  Her pirate wouldn’t be caught anywhere near a place like this.  She made a face as she thought of him pillaging and plundering his way through taverns and ports more like the ones where they found the past version of him, even if he was unreal in this realm, even though he did not belong to her here.  She tried to turn her thoughts. Maybe he had aged like her parents.  Hair grey and longer.  Perhaps the rum had long term consequences on him.  She tried to imagine it but Killian was so fastidious about his looks, she couldn’t even bring up a caricature in her mind’s eye.

 

Occupied by thoughts of her pirate, she didn’t even realize they had found their mapmaker until she ran into Pinocchio nose first.  “The irony,” she muttered as she rubbed her nose.

 

Pinocchio reached back to touch her face. 

 

“I’m fine,” she waved him off in reply to his over-concerned look.  Princess Emma never realized her friend was besotted with her but this Emma could tell.  Pinocchio was a better person in this realm but he was no Killian Jones.

 

They turned back to the man hunched in a dark corner, slid so far back in the shadows she could only see the fringe of his salt and pepper hair dipped over his tankard of ale.

 

“We need your help, mapmaker,” Pinocchio said with as much authority as she had ever seen him exhibit in this realm.

 

The man barely moved.  “I’m off duty,” he said into his drink, voice rough and gravely.

 

“You are never off duty when it comes to the princess,” Pinocchio protested.

 

“I’m sorry Princess Edna has lost her tea set but perhaps mummy can buy her a new one, eh?” he replied mockingly.

 

“It’s Princess Emma!” Pinocchio cried, clearly offended on her behalf. 

 

Emma was actually quite amused and had to bite back a laugh.

 

“My deepest apologies, your highness,” the mapmaker threw her way.  He barely looked up at her - it was still dark and hard to see but it was enough.  She saw the blue of his eyes.  It was unmistakably Killian.

 

Emma’s smile dropped and her heart clenched.  She knew he wasn’t real, and in the wish realm, it was unlikely for them to have crossed paths but it still hurt to see his eyes pass by her without any recognition.  She reflexively gripped at the place where her necklace usually hung, the one with Liam’s ring, but it wasn’t there.

 

“Please, this is important.”  _I need to get back to the_ right _you._

 

“Everything’s bloody important to you lot, ain’t it?  I’d wager choosing the right cape this morning had been important to you,” he huffed before turning away from them, towards the wall.

 

“How dare you speak to the princess that way!”  Pinocchio reached across the table and pulled roughly on Killian’s arm before she could stop him.  A notebook under his elbow slid off the table with the movement of his arm and the previously enclosed papers scattered all over the floor.  Killian cursed and immediately struggled out of his chair.  It was clear one of his legs was giving him problems as he stiffly dragged it to the side.  He finally managed to push back the chair and drop hard to his knees as he gathered the papers.  Emma was arrested by the frantic and pained look on Killian’s face and it took her a moment to stoop down to help him.  When she did, she understood his expression.  There were dozens upon dozens of beautiful sketches of Milah, done up in charcoal, painfully detailed, drawn with care and devotion and knowing him, carried with him at all times.

 

In this realm, he never recovered from losing his first love.  In this realm, he lived another three decades without love, without hope, and finally without the will and ability to seek the revenge that had driven him for centuries before.

 

She wanted to gather him in her arms, hold him close to her and let him weep.  But here, in this realm, they were strangers.  He didn’t even know her name.

 

Still, she reached out and laid her hand on top of his.  He paused and looked up at her. She smiled at him, wondering if he felt it too.  Even in this realm it seemed, there was magic between them, she could feel it in their touch, in the warmth that spread from him to her and back again. 

 

But he dropped his eyes, pulled back his hand and resumed his task.

 

“I’m sorry for this,” she said as she handed the last remaining drawings to him.

 

He barely gave her a nod of acknowledgment as he straightened them with care and reverently placed them back in his notebook.

 

She watched him silently, not wanting to interrupt a task far more important to him than helping an unknown princess.  But as always, she needed him as much as he needed her.  So when his drawings were finally secured and he struggled to stand, she offered him a hand.  He glared at her hand for a moment before accepting it.

 

“Please,” she said, her eyes meeting his. “I do really need your help.  Will you at least hear me out?”

 

Emma could never be sure if it was because in all worlds thus far, Killian Jones was a gentleman or because he had never truly been able to resist her, but she was not surprised by his answer.

 

“As you wish.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Killian of course had a system.  It took him all but a minute to locate the map. Emma was disappointed.  As desperate as she was to be in _her_ Killian’s arms, she didn’t want to leave this one all alone with his maps and dust and drawings of lost love.  Though he wasn’t real, he was real to her. 

 

“I...uh, thank you.”

 

Killian nodded his head and wearily leaned back against a shelf.  His right leg, the one that gave him trouble earlier, was bent at an uncomfortable angle.

 

“What happened to your leg?” she found herself asking.

 

“I thought you had another realm to reach?” he asked, raising a questioning eyebrow.

 

Behind her, Pinocchio huffed loudly.

 

“Methinks your beau is upset with the likes of me.”

 

“Pinocchio is not my beau” she dismissed.  She winced when Pinocchio marched out of the room.  He did try to be a good friend, even if he was not so good at it.

 

Killian hummed in response, a familiar smirk flirting in the corner of his mouth. 

 

It took no small effort on her part not to lean forward and kiss him there, not to respond to him as she normally would, when he was hers and she was his. 

 

He seemed to notice her distraction but instead of throwing innuendos her way, he frowned at her. “Truly, shouldn’t you be on your way?”

 

“Really?” she demanded, hands on her hips.  When had he ever turned her down?

 

He didn’t meet her challenge, only deepening his frown.  She didn’t think he would respond at all but after a pause, he actually scolded her.  “I’m old enough to be your father.”

 

“You’ve always been old enough to be like my great great great grandfather,” she protested.  “Okay, I usually try not to think of that,” she half-heartedly tried to amend.

 

“So you do know who I am,” he accused.  “Why even ask about me?”

 

“I...I uh know you’re Captain Hook, yes.  But I don’t know what happened to you,” she replied, gesturing at his leg.

 

“You mean how I went from scourge of the seven seas to a useless double cripple?”

 

Emma’s annoyance deflated.  This was the Killian from Neverland, the one who thought he was too unworthy to be loved again, the one who never found another reason to believe in his worth.

 

“I...I just would like to know.”  She softly laid a hand on his forearm.  “Please.”

 

He was glaring at her hand again but made no effort to remove it.  “A Crocodile smashed it with a dwarf’s pick.  Happy?”

 

Emma’s eyes widened at his response.  “But how did he get to you?  He’s been locked up in my parents’ dungeon since I was born.”  No need to provide him the details of the Dark One’s release if this realm was going to cease to exist.  There was no Killian out there that would appreciate it.

 

“I went to him.  I didn’t have magic but I had three hundred years of hate and pain.  And the funny thing was, I had hope.”

 

“Hope?” she didn’t expect to hear those words from this Killian.

“Aye, your mother.  You know the story, she was an orphan, stripped of her birthright, of everything she knew, fleeing for her life, and yet she managed to defeat the Evil Queen and imprison my greatest enemy.”

 

Emma listened with care.  She had never heard him speak of her mother this way but she could understand his admiration, see how much of him was also in Snow White.

 

“I thought I could do it too.  I could do the impossible. I could survive my encounter with the Dark One, enjoy my vengeance, let Milah have her peace and...”

 

“And...?”

 

Killian shook his head.  “It doesn’t matter.”  But it did matter, his eyes lingering on a worn blue blanket, carefully draped over the back of a wingback chair.  She drew in sharp breath; she had seen that same blanket on his ship before. She had joked about it being for babies, it was soft and small, like her own baby blanket, but he had drawn her attention away from it. Yet, it was here, it was still here with him. Did he and Milah lose a baby or had he wanted one with Milah that he never got?  Killian and her had never spoken about children, not yet, but the thought of it warmed her from the inside out. 

 

Killian laughed harshly, drawing her attention back to his face. “He got the upper hand. Wanted to make me the kind of man he was.”

 

“Your father saved my life,” he bit out, “came just in time.”

 

“That’s a bad thing?” she asked softly.

 

“I’m a crippled palace servant who never avenged my love, only alive due to the pity of others.  Aye, they should have let the Crocodile finish me.”

 

Emma couldn’t help it, she pulled Killian into her arms.  Her Killian had never given up, would never give up.  It was his willingness to live, his persistence to fight, that enabled him to be in the same time and realm as she was, that allowed them to be together, to realize their True Love.  This Killian had nothing to live for, he merely existed beyond his tragedies.

 

He patted her back awkwardly with his one hand. “According to your own theory, your highness, I’m not even real, I don’t truly exist.  It doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

 

Emma pressed her forehead to his, only tilting back her chin enough to see his eyes.  “What happens to you always matters to me.  I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know how, you are the one better with words, but you exist in my world too.  And you are _loved_ , _so much_.”

 

Killian’s eyes widened in disbelief.  He tried to move back, away from her, but Emma grabbed the sides of his face to force him to look at her, to see the truth in her eyes.  “You are, you are. No matter where, no matter when, I will always love you.”

 

 

Killian studied her with as much intensity as her own Killian.  He wiped a tear with his thumb as softly as her own Killian.  “Don’t worry about me love, I will just disappear when you go away, eh?  It will be like I never existed.” 

 

“You exist to me.”  And she realized he did exist, in the future, if the prophecy was fulfilled, if she died.  This would be him, this man, this shadow.  He wasn’t just an alternative version in a fake realm, this was Killian, in a future without her.

 

As though he was reading her like an open book, he breathed against her lips, “Then don't let myself ever forget how much you saved me.”

 

“You saved me too.”  _Remember it, remember it always._

 

“Then return home, Emma.  Don’t let us be parted any longer,” he cajoled, like the gentleman he was, like the gentleman he always was.

 

And then he smiled at her.

 

It was same smile she had come to know and she felt a fierce need to see it on her own Killian’s face thirty years later.  And she would, she thought as she tightened her hold on him, she couldn’t let some prophecy take this away from her, take Killian’s smile, his fight, his future, maybe even a baby of their own, she was going back, she was going to fight for them both.  “ _I’ll be seeing you, Killian._ ”

 

It was a promise Emma Swan was going to keep.  Operation Promise.  She had the power to change her fate, to change Killian’s.  She believed that, she had to.  She wouldn’t let him down or herself.  She took another look at Killian, at the face she would see in her future.  She was going to make her own fate.

 

***

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually my fix-it for August, not Killian. I didn’t think August was worthy of this new narrative where he was friend, hero, Swan guider. I thought Emma could save herself. She didn’t need a half-friend to keep tabs on her. (No one needs a half-friend.) I don’t really have an issue with OUAT’s Old Hook (Colin looked like he was having fun) but I didn’t think it fit Killian’s narrative. If he never met Emma, it didn’t make sense to me that he would become unkempt and develop a delusional idea of his appeal. The wish realm didn’t offer any other caricatures, everyone pretty much acted within the (albeit somewhat loose) confines of their changed circumstances (other than Emma for obvious reasons). Without his vengeance driving him, I saw Killian drowning deeper in his own tragedies. And Emma is good at putting other people first before herself but in saving Killian, she can put both of them first and it’s in this that she finds the power to believe that she can save the man she loves and herself. #justsaying


End file.
